Fish: You're supporting Trump? Surely you jest

Posted
Tuesday, December 1, 2015 7:42 pm

Brattleboro Reformer

I'd like a side of stupid, and supersize it.

I'm not sure that I've ever watched a candidate double down on lies and stupidity as much as Donald Trump. I have found myself praying that Jeb Bush can pull this thing together and come up from the rear, Trojan Horse style. Given the last Bush we had in office, that's not an easy thing for me to say. But come on people, make it happen. If you're a conservative, Republican or whatever you call yourself, you have got to get behind some civil discourse here. I'm begging you! I need my faith restored.

If I've said it once I've said it a thousand times — if you haven't seen "Idiocracy," you need to see it, because it's turning into the manual for what we're witnessing lately, with Donald Trump driving the bus. Before I go completely crazy I like to play a game, it's called "If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all." So here we go, I'll try to say something nice about Donald Trump: He doesn't live in Vermont! Sorry, that's all I can come up with.

Enough with trying to be nice. This man leaps from one inflammatory statement to another like a frog on lily pads. He banks on his statements grabbing headlines and they always do. But sometimes, in order to grab those headlines, you've got to double down on the dumb. This is something that he has seemingly cornered the market on. Plain and simple, if you saw a child talking to another child the way Donald Trump speaks to people, you would most likely intervene and stop it. He's constantly name calling, he's constantly answering questions with gibberish non-answers, and he likes to remind us how much money he has.

Now, let's say you run into someone at a party and you strike up a conversation. During that conversation you have a minor disagreement and this person calls you a "dumb jerk," then proceeds to tell you that your shoes don't match your hat and you smell like your grandfather's old foot locker; run-on gibberish that would most likely have you excuse yourself from the conversation while rolling your eyes and hoping you never see that person again.

So, ICYMI, that person is leading in the polls!

There was a point in time I could actually say that a shrewd businessman could and would likely make a good president. Someone with strong fiscal sense and finesse. Someone that would be able to negotiate with world leaders in a non-threatening way. Because, let's face it, the one thing we do is war; we're good at it. But what we don't need to do is start school-yard bully fights with other world powerhouses that put any of our men or women in harm's way. That's not to say if harm's way finds us we shouldn't defend ourselves, but we should never lead with a bombing-our-way-to-peace strategy. If you have raised children, you teach them to defend themselves while simultaneously making sure they don't wind up being the school bully. Most of you succeed, while some fail, but we all have to try.

For now, Trump has a podium from which to spew his nonsense, and he has supporters. I don't know why, but he does. If I were to guess, it's those people who are sick and tired of establishment politicians who make promise after promise then don't follow through until they get closer to an election cycle. Well, Trump is certainly not an establishment politico type, that we can say with 100 percent certainty. But can Trump discern the difference between bullying and diplomacy?

Trump once hit the stump telling everyone how much he was worth and that he wouldn't take money from special interests. Largely because he's worth $4 billion. Now we know that while money can buy you a candidacy, it can't buy you manners, character, class, respect, common sense or integrity, and I guess that's the part that scares me the most. We can all be bought and sold. What the hell is up with that?

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